The State Highway Administration didn’t have enough snow-clearing equipment in place before January’s massive snowstorm and the county’s online snow removal map could use improvements, state and county officials acknowledged during a County Council briefing Tuesday.
The session came more than a month after the Jan. 22-24 storm dumped between 18 to 39 inches of snow on Montgomery County. The session was first scheduled for Feb. 9, but a winter storm event that day forced the council to postpone it to Tuesday, as spring-like weather outside the Council Office Building in Rockville pushed the temperature past 70 degrees.
County Chief Administrative Officer Timothy Firestine said the county government will do internal reviews of its online snow map, which elicited complaints because it provided little real-time info as to when streets would be plowed, and its 311 call center, which had wait times of 10 to 15 minutes amid a record-breaking deluge of calls after the storm.
Tom Fountain, a manager of the State Highway Administration (SHA) district that oversees state roads in the county, admitted the agency didn’t procure enough contractors and enough heavy-duty equipment such as snow blowers and front-end loaders before the storm to completely clear all lanes of major roads in a timely fashion.
Major state roads such as Rockville Pike, Old Georgetown Road and Connecticut Avenue had lanes full of snow as late as Jan. 30, which reduced those roads by a lane and created major traffic congestion once many people returned to work Jan. 27.
Fountain said the SHA was competing with other jurisdictions also impacted by the storm for the same out-of-state contractors, and contractors that did express interest faced delays in getting to Maryland.
“The snow just got too deep and too heavy and we just couldn’t move it off the road with our trucks,” Fountain said. “We relied on a lot of companies from other states to bring in front-end loaders [and] snow blowers and we didn’t get some of that equipment until Tuesday [Jan. 26], in some cases Wednesday [Jan. 27].”
Fountain said that in some cases, contractors unfamiliar with the area didn’t realize where a road widened to an extra lane, leading to snow going unplowed. He said the SHA plans to add markings to roadside signage to make it clear when a route adds a lane or loses a lane.
Fountain estimated the snow storm cost the SHA $110 million statewide for snow removal. The agency’s budget was $54 million. He told council members the SHA faces a tough decision on when to call in out-of-state contractors. If a storm doesn’t produce as much snow as predicted, those contractors typically still must be paid.
“I just wish that we could’ve got [our people] the resources to get the job done a little bit earlier,” Fountain said. “We just need to pull the trigger to pay these companies premium money to have them come here and sit. If the forecast goes bad and we don’t get any snow, we just chucked up a large dollar figure that didn’t accomplish anything. That trigger should’ve been pulled [for this storm]. I have no excuses for why it wasn’t.”
After praising Fountain for his candor, council member Roger Berliner said he still took issue with the performance of SHA’s snow removal operations during the storm.
“When you guys fall down on your job, it actually falls down on us as well,” Berliner said. “After waiting so long to get out of their neighborhoods, then to get on to Wisconsin Avenue or Connecticut Avenue and to see the kind of gridlock there was because those streets weren’t plowed appropriately just drove people crazy.”
Earl Stoddard, manager of the county’s Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, said initial estimates put the county’s snow removal costs from the storm at about $40 million, roughly equivalent to the $1 million per inch measure County Executive Ike Leggett often mentions.
Some of that total could be covered by federal disaster aid because President Obama declared the storm a major disaster for the state of Maryland.
Some council members, including Nancy Navarro and Sidney Katz, wondered if the county should continue publishing its online snow map if it doesn’t provide more up-to-date information on plowing activities.
During the storm, many complained the map listed almost all residential neighborhood streets as “in progress.” With more than 5,200 lane miles of roads to maintain, many of them smaller neighborhood streets, the final streets to be plowed didn’t see a plow until the morning of Jan. 27.
“If every single route says in progress, that doesn’t really tell you much in terms of when to expect something,” Navarro said.
“All that causes is more frustration than anything else,” Katz said.
Council member Tom Hucker suggested looking at New York City’s live snow removal map, which relies on trackers on snow plows. Firestine said the county plans to look at other maps and technology used by other jurisdictions.
“We don’t disagree and I think you’re right,” he told Berliner, who also criticized the map. “More details would be better than what we have been providing.”
The county’s snow removal operation, which at its peak on Jan. 26 consisted of about 1,100 pieces of equipment in use, generally received solid reviews from council members. Council member Hans Riemer praised the Montgomery County Department of Transportation for clearing more county-owned sidewalks and bus waiting areas than after previous storms, though he said he would like to talk about better enforcement of the county’s sidewalk snow removal law.
County spokesperson Patrick Lacefield said Leggett never offered complete amnesty from the law—which requires private property owners to clear their sidewalks of snow or ice within 24 hours of the end of a snowstorm.
But the county did make it clear it would only enforce the law, violation of which is punishable by a $50 fine, “in common sense situations.” On Jan. 28, it began asking for complaints from residents about sidewalks that hadn’t been cleared. Lacefield said only two property owners were given citations, a number consistent with enforcement of the law in previous winters.
